At One with our Creative Ideal: Paper-in-a-Post

Just as the sun's rays flow into the figure and become part of his being, so also is the light of creativity an element within every individual, illuminating his soul and urging him toward his dreams.




 

While the Internet and other digital media resources certainly facilitate collaborative efforts and provide a worldwide stage whereon creators can display their work, the creative process remains a largely individual endeavor, as evidenced in Ayn Rand's landmark novel, The Fountainhead.

 

While it will be noted that a vast multitude of history's great thinkers developed and tested their ideas at least to some extent in social spheres, the ideal of creation has always been more so about self-actualization than about yielding to the opinions of others. Rand brilliantly expresses this idea in The Fountainhead through Howard Roark's non-conformist architectural style and unwillingness to compromise his creative integrity. For Roark, architecture is not about pleasing a customer or accruing public acclaim but rather about maintaining one's innovative integrity and staying true to the identity of the creative work as an entity. Peter Keating, whose career represents the diametric opposite of the Roarkian ideal, yet described those who compromise their creative ideal in yielding to others' opinions as follows:

When you meet them, they’re not what you met last. In any given hour, they kill some part of themselves. They change, they deny, they contradict–and they call it growth. At the end there’s nothing left, nothing unrevered or unbetrayed; as if there had never been any entity, only a succession of adjectives fading in and out on an unformed mass.

 With the birth of the Internet and other digital media resources, we have seen how ideas in their infancy can take on a certain vitality of their own as projects garner support from enthusiasts and collaborators, but at its heart, every creative endeavor represents a piece of the creator's soul. One must first discover it within oneself and then breath life into it through pen or paint. Only then, by virtue of his creativity and willingness to sacrifice, can the Promethean creator set the world afire with his creation. Dr. James Montmarquet, author of "Prometheus: Ayn Rand's Ethic of Creation," remarked that "[t]he architecture of the mind is conceptualization and consciousness; conceptualization is at the heart of any cognitive advance." Ultimately, creativity is a manifestation of the human soul and intellect, and the Internet is simply a facilitator of that creativity, a vehicle through which the creator can express and share his work. The ideas of others will, of course, serve their purpose in shaping a creator's ideas, but the creator must find within himself the courage, integrity, and confidence to go forward with his labors, pursuing his dreams even when everyone else tells him that he can't. 

Living YOUR Dreams

I've had a tough time really trying to express a couple of ideas in my research of The Fountainhead, but I think I've found a quote that kind of sums up a number of my thoughts on the matter:

Listen to what is being preached today. Look at everyone around us. You've wondered why they suffer, why they seek happiness and never find it. If any man stopped and asked himself whether he's ever held a truly personal desire, he'd find the answer. He'd see that all his wishes, his efforts, his dreams, his ambitions are motivated by other men. He's not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander's delusion - prestige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded. He can't say about a single thing: 'This is what I wanted because I wanted it, not because it made my neighbors gape at me'. Then he wonders why he's unhappy.   -Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

I've been trying to encapsulate this idea the whole time, the idea that an individual can seek his/her own dreams and still contribute positively to society, the idea that we don't have to chase after the age old aspirations of our grandfathers or follow the trends of our neighbors and friends. Each member of mankind is amazing, and each member of society has something special to contribute, some new innovation, some novel creation. It just doesn't make sense to waste our time living out someone else's second-hand dreams when we might, with a little effort, attain that which we ourselves desire more than anything else.

I will sleep tomorrow if it means that I can dream tonight...

I've only been to class once so far, and yet I feel that my mind is being unlocked, that I am being set free from some strange mental shackles which have bound my mind for a while now. I feel some of the passion returning, and though tomorrow I will likely envy those that now rest their heads on downy pillows and drift away into downy dreams, I don't feel like I can go to bed tonight -- not yet, at least. Anne Morrow Lindbergh said that "Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after,” and while I've never before had coffee, I'm beginning to understand better her sentiment.

I have a bunch of pages full of quotes and ideas and thoughts about what I've been reading from Writing About Literature in the Digital Age, and I've got no idea where to start, so I guess I'll just start...